Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  ‘So it did work?’

  ‘For a while. Until it was bad again and I needed another ending. That’s how it is. Sometimes you get given an ending, other times you have to make one.’

  ‘By jumping in a moat?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand. You only ever get to see me like this. But I’m incredibly good at ending things.’

  ‘It certainly seems—’ I paused. A random thought had struck me. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Fuck?’

  ‘Cameras! The store would’ve had cameras. They would’ve been everywhere.’

  ‘So?’

  All pleasure at having committed a successful crime now turned on me. My stomach felt as if it were full of putrid milk. I stared at the basket. ‘Throw all this crap away.’

  ‘Calm down,’ Mami said.

  ‘They’ll identify you, Mami. They’ll fucking identify you, and then they’ll identify me. Maybe you’ll be okay, being Japanese, rich and clearly fucked in the head, but I’ll be put away. They can hold me without a charge here. Do you understand what I’m telling you? We’re in real trouble.’

  Mami only grinned. ‘I stole this basket full of nothing. It’s mine. I’m not throwing anything away.’

  I started at the concrete surrounding my feet, furious.

  ‘Stop snorting and listen,’ Mami said abruptly. ‘Forget the cameras. They’re nothing to worry about. If anyone ever asks you—which they won’t—we met just before we walked in. You hit on me and I said no. Perfectly believable. Then you left and after that you don’t know what happened. Noah, you’re in the clear. And for what it’s worth, so am I. Look at me. Look at this make-up. There were only two cameras in that store and I know where they both were. I never went near them and I certainly didn’t look at them. I’ve been doing this for a long time.’

  She bent to withdraw two cans of gin and tonic from the basket, gave me one, then upended the rest of her booty onto the footpath. Drinks in hand, the aluminium still cool beneath our fingers, we stared at a splashing of potato chips, chocolate and beef jerky. I edged a few items around with one sneaker.

  ‘To you,’ she said, opening her can, then mine.

  ‘To me?’

  ‘For being funny.’

  I took a grumpy swig.

  Without drinking herself, Mami pulled out her mobile phone and pressed a button. She gave detailed instructions to the cab company in Japanese and, putting her arm under mine, hoisted me up. I took another quick swig.

  ‘I organised a rendezvous with a cab driver I know,’ she said seriously. ‘Don’t worry, we can trust him. But you’re right, we’ll need to lie low until all this blows over. There’s a safe house I know. Well, a hotel really. It’s perfect for—’

  ‘I can’t, Ma—’

  ‘No names,’ she said, gently putting a finger to my lips and then slipping it into my mouth. I was too confused to resist. To mask my discomfort I tried to look fed up, but in the end only went cross-eyed. Having felt the backs of my teeth, and ignoring my grunts of protest, Mami left the finger in place until at last we spotted the cab.

  The First Breakfast

  of the Summer

  The sun rose slowly. We both sat cross-legged, drunk, toes against the floor-to-ceiling window. Below us Tokyo was already in full swing. Faint car horns reached us. People marched. It felt like another world connected to me only by the loosest of threads, and my earlier panic, my fear at this world, at its omnipotence had—thanks to crime and alcohol—been replaced with a soft contempt for the supposed strength of societies, which sooner or later fell and were forgotten. I had snuck past the hotel front desk into a new world high above it all, a world entirely without rules.

  ‘I have whisky,’ Mami said, standing and stretching. ‘I don’t normally drink whisky but I feel like it. I’m not at all tired and I’ll get a hangover if I stop drinking without going to bed. Did you know today’s the very first day of summer? At least, I think it is. I’ll change out of this and we’ll have whisky for breakfast.’

  Mami showered while I flicked through her heavily scratched CD collection, selecting something classical and sliding it into the machine. When she heard this she stuck her head out the bathroom door and, drying her face with a hand towel, frowned.

  ‘Can you get the whisky?’ she asked. ‘Everything’s right above the bar. Choose whichever one you think is best. There’s ice in the fridge.’

  ‘Do they restock that bar every day?’ I asked, thinking about my last visit.

  ‘Every week, I think. Why?’

  ‘Just wondering.’

  Mami started to close the bathroom door, turning back towards the mirror.

  ‘One other thing,’ I said. ‘Why do you cram everything into this one room?’

  ‘So I know where it is,’ she called, eyes following my reflection. ‘I don’t have time to search the whole place.’

  ‘But why not have it—’

  ‘Just get the whisky.’ She shut the door, voice suddenly muffled. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

  I crossed to the bar, stepping behind it. I slid out the bottom section of the refrigerator and found ice in a plastic tray. Not knowing the first thing about whisky, I dropped the cubes into a metal bucket on a stand. Next I ran a finger across the bottles. The second to last was a single malt, which I seemed to recall was a good thing, so I set the bottle on the ice in the bucket.

  It occurred to me to call room service. I had no idea what went with whisky, and chose strawberries, potato chips and cheese sticks.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the man on the other end of the line in crisp Japanese. I hung up, walked back to the bar and poured myself a frothy beer.

  A moment later there was a knock at the door. I stared at it, amazed.

  ‘Room service?’ I called, but there was no answer. Hurriedly carrying the bucketed whisky over to the window, I shouted, ‘Just a minute.’

  Mami stepped from the bathroom, now dressed in baggy pyjamas. There was another loud knock.

  ‘Who’s at the door?’ she asked.

  ‘Room service.’

  ‘What did you order?’

  ‘Chips and cheese.’

  ‘What a truly strange breakfast. And you’ve put the whisky on ice, I see. A lovely touch. I’ll get the door in case it’s that maid.’

  She put on a long, white dressing-gown, did it up at the waist and walked to the door. I collected a pair of tumblers from the bar and, with nothing left to organise, flopped down at the window. Mami clicked back the lock.

  ‘You must be Matilda,’ she said after a pause. ‘Please, come in. He’s over at the window.’

  Thinking back on it now, it ought to have been far more unpleasant. Tilly stepped inside and, scratching the back of one hand with the other, crossed to the window at which I sat. At first I remained seated, staring up, mouth open. Then I jumped to my feet. She looked tired, pale and weak. Her eyes crawled over the whisky bottle, the tumblers and ice bucket, but she said nothing. Mami, meanwhile, leant against the wall beside the door, one leg crossed over the other, hands behind her back. She did not turn off the stereo or fidget, but remained perfectly still.

  ‘Hi,’ Tilly said.

  I tried to smile but could only grimace. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I am, yeah.’

  It was difficult to know what to do next. My feelings were tangled. I wanted to run and stay put; wanted to protest my innocence and apologise; wanted to ask Tilly what right she had to spy and offer her a drink. As it was, the last urge won out.

  ‘Whisky?’ I asked. Tilly let out a sharp laugh and swung to look at Mami, who pushed herself up off the wall and smiled. A warm smile, it did not gloat but it did not apologise, either. Nor did it make light of the situation. Instead it simply offered up courtesy—or the potential for it—like a window through which Tilly was as welcome to climb as throw a rock. Tilly seemed to understand all this in a single, perfunctory glance, as women do.

  ‘Whisky would be nice,’ she said, voi
ce flat. ‘Do you have a spare glass?’

  Mami nodded and retrieved a third tumbler from the bar. Though pleasant and natural in her movements, there was a coldness in her eyes when they caught mine. Clearly she wanted everything discussed later—argued elsewhere, far away. She took charge of the whisky, pouring it into the glasses and scooping ice from the bucket. The sound of her long-fingered, beautiful hand chasing this half-melted ice like a tyre on gravel was, until she decided to speak, the only sound in the room.

  ‘This is an Irish whisky,’ she said as she passed a tumbler to Tilly.

  ‘Is it?’ Tilly peered into the glass without any real curiosity.

  ‘A single malt,’ I said, because it felt like a safe enough thing to say.

  Tilly crossed the last few feet to the window and peered directly down. With every tick of the wall-clock behind us I expected her to spin and pitch the thick-based tumbler at my head. Thrown accurately and with a modicum of force, the thing held the potential to kill me. But she refrained.

  ‘I decided to surprise you,’ she said. She embedded these words in a sigh. ‘After talking to you on the phone I decided I wanted to come back, whatever the cost. A mistake.’

  I shrugged weakly. Somewhere behind us I heard Mami answer the door, murmur in Japanese and scratch a pen across paper. She brought the room service over, set it down in front of us and carefully removed the silver lids.

  ‘I got in late last night,’ Tilly continued. ‘By the time I made it to the hostel, to our room, you weren’t there.’

  ‘Your keys,’ I said, remembering Tilly had left them with me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Tilly turned to Mami. ‘I sat against the door for a few hours. Then, worried, I woke up our new neighbour to ask if he had any idea where Noah might be. He suggested here —“as a long shot”. He had an envelope with your address on the back. When I asked him what Noah was doing in a hotel room he clamped up, seemed to think he’d said something wrong. Curiosity got the better of me after that. I’m sorry to have intruded.’

  Hands trembling, Tilly took a gulp of whisky. She scrunched her eyes and swallowed it. Mami offered her a glass of mineral water.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tilly said, ignoring the offer, ‘but I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘We haven’t, no. I’m Mami, a friend of Noah’s.’

  ‘Matilda North.’ Tilly dolefully eyed the whisky in her tumbler then poured the rest down her throat. ‘I’ve been away.’

  Mami was unflustered. ‘Which is why we haven’t met, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’m sure. May I have another glass of whisky? I’ve finished this one.’

  Mami nodded and smiled. I had the sense that under very different circumstances the two girls might well have liked one another. I watched as Mami pulled her long hair into a pony tail and tied it off with one of the countless rubber bands she seemed able to produce at any time. She poured out a hefty whisky and carried it to Tilly.

  We all sat and sipped quietly at our drinks.

  ‘Beautiful morning,’ Tilly observed coolly.

  I stared out over the Imperial Palace. Looking to distract myself I traced the moats glimmering in the early morning sun. It was an exceptionally clear morning. Often the sky above Tokyo was a smoky white in summer, too bright to stare into and yet simultaneously depthless and depressing. This morning, though, it was perfectly blue. A number of birds flew in formation, stretching away then collapsing back in on one another, like dough. They swung in close to the hotel, only to be drawn back towards the green of the palace grounds. Mami took out a pack of Mild Seven cigarettes and lit up, the acrid smoke filling my nostrils. I thought about her jumping into the palace moat, her thin arms flailing, her mouth open but soundless, her eyes wide, her legs kicking, her clothes climbing up her tense body. The sudden thought caused a smile.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Mami asked, the question like a slap.

  ‘It’s an odd hour to be drinking whisky.’

  ‘It is that,’ Tilly said, nodding sombrely. She was looking drunk.

  The smoke from Mami’s cigarette ran along the window. I watched it, wanting to smoke myself. But I refrained, refilling my glass instead. My second whisky tasted smoother and softer than the first. It fell down my throat and into my empty stomach like hot soup. Tilly, long-faced and without ever looking at my tumbler, matched me sip for sip. Sometimes she even managed two to my one.

  I sensed an obligation to speak but nothing—no particular topic—was forthcoming. I felt like a soldier lying between two opposing trenches, out in no-man’s-land, faking dead. One false move and I would get it between the eyes, if not from one side, then from the other. Or both. That was karma after all—well, karma according to Harry, who certainly had gone and fucked me over for no apparent reason. What would he make of the energy waves surrounding me now? Did I care?

  I refilled everyone’s drinks. We kept staring out the window, growing increasingly drunk and saying nothing for fear of an explosion. Mami stood at one point and changed the CD to jazz, but otherwise we were still.

  Finishing her third whisky, Tilly, who normally never drank, stood unsteadily. The movement was abrupt and she thrust her hands out to the glass window to keep her balance. I leapt forward to pull her back from it but she somehow found the coordination to push me flat on my back. The hand that was still on the window squeaked loudly when she pulled it away.

  She rubbed one ear confusedly. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Really, I am. My balance is off. I should go.’

  ‘I’ll come with you then,’ I said, doing my best to smile.

  Tilly shook her head. ‘No, just give me your key. You should stay.’

  Mami jumped up.

  ‘No, he’ll go with you. Thank you for visiting, though.’ Very uncharacteristically, she bowed, holding the show of deference for a few seconds before straightening. As if in reply, Tilly casually reached out and shook her hand.

  Mami again smiled. ‘It was a pleasure meeting you, Matilda.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. But he’ll stay here.’

  Before I could determine what to do, Tilly let herself out, taking my key with her. She shut the door softly and left me staring drunkenly at strawberries, chips and cheese.

  Mami went to bed without a word. She was not angry, simply disinterested.

  Limbo

  To return to Japan, Tilly had accepted a three-month position at a university, running classes for students who wanted to study English but who could not include the subject in their Engineering degrees. Since she already had accommodation in Japan, she turned down the company’s fully furnished, outrageously priced apartment. She did, however, accept a return economy airfare, signing a contract which stipulated she would reimburse the cost of this if she failed to teach for the full three months.

  I learnt all this when I finally dragged myself home from Mami’s hotel, determined to salvage a little dignity by telling the truth.

  ‘There’s no way I’m changing all my plans,’ Tilly said when I knocked on my own door and found it to be locked.

  ‘I’m not asking you to,’ I said, slotting the words in beneath a hinge. I had a jagged headache and wanted only to rest up for an hour before work. Syrupy Japanese medication, bought and gulped down on the way home, had only teased the pain in my forehead, provoking a sustained roar. I might just as well have gulped ink.

  ‘Tell me about that girl.’

  ‘She gave me a short massage once,’ I said. ‘That’s all. That’s the only physical contact there’s ever been.’

  Tilly unlocked the door and wrenched it open. ‘Where?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where did she give you this massage?’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘Point!’

  Hesitantly, I pointed.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  The door slammed shut in my face with a small gust of air, as if from a set of bellows. The lock clicked back in place.

  ‘I feel like a fool,’ c
ame a small wailing admission.

  I gave up on honesty. ‘I’m not interested in her, Tilly.’

  ‘You really think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘No. Can you open the door?’

  To my surprise, Tilly did. Exactly enough to eyeball me with one fearsome eye. I backed away and lowered my head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now?’

  ‘We’ll keep on sharing the room. Platonically.’

  She snorted. ‘You mean you don’t want me to kick you out? This was my room, remember? You moved in here.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll move out then. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Don’t put on that haughty crap with me. You wouldn’t last a night sleeping on the street. You’d be back again by morning.’

  ‘You’re right.’ I did my best to look hangdog. ‘I can’t afford to move out. I don’t know what I’ll do but it’s my own fault. I deserve it.’

  Tilly opened the door a fraction wider. ‘I’ll let you stay one week. After that I expect you gone. Clear?’

  ‘Thank you. That’s kind.’ I took one step forward, hoping to get in a nap, but Tilly shut the door, only to open it again and continue, ‘And for this one week—which I can’t believe I’m offering—I’ll be in the bed and you’ll be on the floor. And I’m throwing out this damn ticking wall-clock of yours which I can’t stand. And when I’m tired the light goes out. Those are my conditions. Understood?’

  ‘Understood. Can I come in?’

  ‘Are you sorry?’

  ‘Of course. I feel absolutely awful.’

  ‘Good.’

  And she slammed the door shut again.

  I gave up on going to work and went instead to a local Yoshinoya restaurant, toying with a large bowl of gyudon. Propped up at the horseshoe-shaped counter I lifted strips of beef with my disposable chopsticks and dropped them back down onto the cold, tacky rice. The place was filled with other miserable men and we all tended to our depression without looking up except to order beer.

  The first night under Tilly’s new terms we both lay awake listening to one another breathe. I felt like a trapped cockroach. I dared not move, dared not rustle a sheet for fear of disturbing Tilly’s pretend sleep. Once, quietly, I whispered her name, but she ignored me and deepened her breathing. In absolute desperation I passed the night trying to think of places I could move to. I did sum after sum inside my head. I concocted mock budgets. I lowered my sights. But as light crept into the room, birds chirping and dogs yapping back at them, I was no closer to a solution than I had been at midnight. I simply did not have the money for a down payment. I had blown most of my savings on an air ticket home and the loan to Harry.